Recently, streams of optical pulses having durations of about 100 femtoseconds and tunable in the near infrared region of the spectrum have been generated with continuous wave pumped Ti:sapphire lasers. See, for example, the publications by Spence et al., Optics Letters, Vol. 16, No. 1, Jan. 1, 1991, pages 42-44; Sarukura et al., Optics Letters, Vol. 16, No. 3, Feb. 1, 1991, pages 153-155; and, Keller et al., Optics Letters, Vol. 16, No. 13, Jul. 1, 1991, pages 1022-1024.
There are instances, however, where it is necessary to have two independently tunable streams of pulses of approximately 100 femtoseconds duration and which exhibit less than 100 femtoseconds of jitter relative to each other. Presently it is not possible to generate two independently tunable high repetition rate streams of approximately 100 femtoseconds pulses which have less than 100 femtoseconds of jitter. This invention is directed toward solving this problem.